Transcript
WEBVTT
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You are listening to the Higher Ed
Marketer, a podcast geared towards marketing professionals
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in higher education. This show will
tackle all sorts of questions related to student
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recruitment, don'tor relations, marketing trends, new technologies and so much more.
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If you are looking for conversation centered
around where the industry is going, this
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podcast is for you. Let's get
into the show. Welcome to the High
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Ed Marketer podcast. I'm troy singer
in here with my cohost Bart Taylor,
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where each week we interview higher Ed
marketers that we admire for the betterment of
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the community. Today we get to
talk to Philip Dearborn, who is the
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president of the Association of Biblical Higher
Education. He comes to us with twenty
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five plus years worth of knowledge.
He comes to us with wonderful stories and
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I can't wait for everyone to listen
to the practical advice daddy and ministers.
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Yeah, try he's it's such a
great episode. There were so many different
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topics that we talked about, everything
from recruiting mission fit students and what that
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means in a broader sense, as
well as to just the idea of,
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you know, silos on campus and
ways to kind of work around those.
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One of the things that I really
want to kind of encourage everybody. I
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mean as if you're just starting to
join us and you're like, okay,
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I'm going to stick around for this
episode, because that's the way I am
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with podcast sometimes. I want to
really encourage you that you know, even
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though you might not your school might
not be a Bible College, you might
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not be a faith based school and
there might be different feelings that you have
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about that, a lot of what
we talked about is applicable to just about
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every school, whether you're a big
school, small school or in between.
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I really encourage you to kind of
just listen and hear everything that that we
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talked about because, even though we
talk about mission fit students, every school
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and as you'll see as you're here
in the episode, every school has a
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mission and you need to find the
right types of students to fulfill that mission
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of your institution. He does an
excellent job of conveying the successful practices and
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Higher Ed Marketing and leadership. Yeah, you can. Without further ADO,
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here's Philip Dearborn. We are speaking
with Philip Dearborn here on the Higher Ed
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Marketer podcast. Thank you so much
for being a guest today with this Philip,
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it's a pleasure to be here troy. Because of your experience both on
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the college level and then now your
current position with an accreditation on associate level,
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we would like to talk to you
about successful leadership and also marketing within
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higher education and before we get into
it, if you could give us a
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little bit about your background and also
what you currently do. Sure, I
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spent prior to joining the Association for
a Biblical Higher Education, Abh G.
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before joining them as president, I
served just over twenty five years in Biblical
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Higher Education and in that time pretty
much hit almost every single department that you
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possibly could on a campus. I
started recruiting students, move from there into
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the registrar's office, then went from
there to an associate vice president and a
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vice president, then provost and even
spend a little bit of time as an
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interim vice president of Student Affairs.
So I've I've been around the campus and
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kind of get a sense of everything
that happens on a campus. Thank you.
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In previous conversations, I know that
one of the one of your passions
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is making sure schools know that the
height of their success is going to come
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from the pursuit of mission fit students
and would love to go into that conversation
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with you and if you could just
share some of your perspective and why you
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feel so passionately about that. Sure, sure, and a lot of it.
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I think that that passion has driven
to where I am now as president
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of Abh G, where I kind
of get a little bit more of a
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global picture at Biblical higher education and
Biblical High Education. We have a hundred
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and fifty five institutions across North America. Eighteen of those earned Canada, and
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those institutions are enrolling about sixty three
thou students, which is really cool to
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see. I mean that's sixty threezero
students who are laser focused on fulfilling God's
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call in their lives and I think
that's where mission fit why I'm so passionate
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about that, because biblical higher education
is laser focused on Biblical and theological education
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and I think it's important that throughout
the entire institution, from beginning to end,
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the entire student experience, that institutions
are recruiting truly mission fit institutions who
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are looking to fulfill God's call on
their life and an institutions got identify those
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students who fit with that institution.
I think that's a I think that's a
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great point, Philip, and I
know that we've talked about this before and
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I've spoken with a a lot of
my clients and full transparency, I do
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work with Abh g and several of
their institutions. But one of the things
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I want to kind of for you
know, I don't want to turn this
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into I don't want somebody tuning out
right now because it's like, okay,
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well, I'm not a Bible College, so I don't this doesn't apply to
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me. Don't do that, because
really what we're talking about here is I
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believe that every college in in in
the world can benefit from understanding what true
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mission fit means. I mean,
we're talking about the context here of Biblical
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Higher Education and I've seen it play
out a little bit. But keep in
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mind that we're talking about if you're
an art school, you have mission fit
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students because you're you're trying to find
students who need an art eduction education.
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If you're an engineering school, same
thing. So this applies broadly. So
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don't tune us out because we're focused
in on a specific you know element of
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that, but I think it's it's
really critical fill up because I've worked with
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a lot of schools and even larger
faith based schools that that maybe our more
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liberal arts in their approach as opposed
to specifically Biblical and theological training. I've
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seen that, even when they are
trying to focus on mission fit, and
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you know I've heard it before,
it's like, you know, hey,
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we're really we're really trying to,
you know, really increase the enrollment pool.
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Maybe we've leaned into athletics to do
that a little bit. You know,
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we're really trying to bring in as
many student athletes to fill the rosters.
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But guess what, when they get
there first week, they spend a
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day in chapel and they're like,
Oh, you guys are kind of serious
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about this Jesus thing. What's that
going on? Yeah, so, so
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when you have that friction between,
you know, mission fit students versus a
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student that's just going to fill a
fill a roster or fill a spot in
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a seat on campus, that can
really be detrimental to this institution. Yeah,
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you set it very well, Barret, and you know I look at
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at as institutional alignment. Probably no
other sector, perhaps the healthcare industry would
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be up there. But but when
you talk about mission within higher education,
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I the accreditation market, everything.
Your mission is the promise that you make
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to the students. That's what you're
going to fulfill if they engage with you
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and study your institution. You know, pretty much on any college campus you
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can ask a faculty member, you
can ask a staff member, you can
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ask the present what's the mission of
the institution? And so it's starts there
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and it drives everything that the institution
does. So if you have misalignment right
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from the beginning, I mean look
at student life cycle, even from,
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you know, the prospecting side of
it all the way through, you need
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institutional alignment to make sure that you're
not compromising on that mission. You know,
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it's a it's it's an extreme case
to say, you know, if
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you're an engineering school and your your
mission is laser focused on engineering and you
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make the decision, okay, well, we're going to enroll these art students
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because we need to fill more seats, there's going to be an inconsistency there
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and those students aren't going to have
a good experience on your campus. And
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in fact, what they do is
actually take away from the experience of those
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who are mission fit students. But
the reality is, especially in the market
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of higher education, there's a whole
lot of pressure on enrollment officers and marketing
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departments to fill seats and sometimes that
pressure becomes so overwhelming that you start to
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cheat and you start to compromise on
that mission. And I don't think it
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happens all at once either. I
think it's this iterative approach that well,
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if we just if we just recruit
these students and well, if we just
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do this, if we just do
this, if we just do this,
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and before you know it, over
time, what you've done you water down
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your mission and you've moved away from
really what your main target ought to be.
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Yeah, I think that's so critical
and and I know that in our
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pre conversation a little bit we talked
about just the whole idea of yet when
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we start to kind of there's two
things. I think. One is we've
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really got to understand from a institutional
standpoint, and many times marketers are the
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ones that can kind of help help
drive this is what who are we really?
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What do we all about? What
is that mission? Because, I
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mean, we can kind of all
know it and when we see it,
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but how do we articulate it and
then how do we just kind of continue
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to, you know, that drum
beat, not only externally for the prospective
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students that we have, but also
internally, for for our internal audiences?
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I think that's one thing, but
I think the second thing also is the
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idea of really making sure that that
alignment that we have internally, that we
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really kind of play in our own
lanes so that we can make sure that
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those those items that we're doing are
are working for the betterment of the entire
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institution and how we represent the brand. What do you think about that,
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Philip? Yeah. Yeah, so
it's a fascinating conversation when you look at
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when you look at mission, when
you look at efforts that college is make
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to enroll new students, and and
I want to be clear that you know
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athletics as a front porch, the
worship arts or theater arts or production arts
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or another front porch. Front Porch
is what the public sees, and so
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a lot of times institutions use their
front porch to recruit students in and there's
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nothing wrong with that. I think. I think you can have a very
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strong athletic recruitment effort at a Bible
College or even at an engineering school.
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So there are definitely front porch elements
that you want to track students in.
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You just have to make sure that
they are mission fit from the start that
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by having that, then suddenly doesn't
say, okay, well, we're going
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to have this, we're going to
grow our Bible college enrollment through an athletics
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programs. Well, you're only going
to be a division three, maybe division
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two, you'll never be a division
one. So Be Realistic about those efforts.
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And that's where I think a lot
of times in my experience, what
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I've seen, and even in my
experience at a college setting, there was
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kind of this dissatisfaction of where we
are and we've got to be something more
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and and always looking over the fence
and seeing that the grass is green or
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well, we need we need to
chase after that or there's that shiny object.
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We need to be that without without
being satisfied with okay, this is
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our lane, this is this is
who we are today, this is what
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our mission defines us as. We're
not going to play outside of that.
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And and don't get me wrong,
you ought to be pursuing something, you
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ought to be targeting, something you
ought to be moving in a direction,
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but don't overreach in that process.
I think there's a saying, I'm not
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going to say it real well,
but there's a saying of don't forget who,
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who Brung you to the dance,
right, and I think there's this
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idea on college campuses that we forget
who brought us to the dance and we
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try to live outside of that and
then that process we actually do more damage
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to the institution and potentially take it
in a direction that you don't necessarily want
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to go. That's great. You
also have mentioned in our pre conversation your
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belief in the necessity for departments to
work well with one another across campus and
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would like for you to go a
little deeper with your thoughts on that.
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Yeah, absolutely. You know,
higher education is very unique. You don't
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have to be in too many of
our circles and you recognize the term of
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silos and our campuses tend to be
siloed, meaning that this department does this
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and this department does that, and
some of it, I think, is
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a function of size. As institutions
grow, their positions become more specialized and
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because of that they're hiring people who
just no marketing or just no recruitment or
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just no academics, and that's all
good. Growth is good, but the
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flip side of that is you're hiring
people who are very specialized in their field
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and you know the I think that
contributes to the silo effect. And boy,
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we got to break down silos on
our college campus as we and I
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get it you want to, especially
when it when it comes to faculty and
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departments who have been trained. They're
passionate about their area of expertise and and
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they think that they have the best
academic program that there ever was and they've
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and trained to think that way.
And unfortunately, what that does it creates
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the silo and I think we have
to constantly be working at tearing down those
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silos so that we gain an appreciation
for what other departments do on the campus.
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You know, it's it's a it's
a catch twenty two situation. You
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know, professors aren't going to have
students to teach if the recruitment office in
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the marketing teams aren't working together to
recruit the students. They'll teach empty classrooms.
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There's there's nobody to teach. At
the same time, I think the
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recruitment marketing teams need to realize that
once students are identified to come into the
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campus, that that's what they experienced, that that's who's delivering on the promise,
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or the faculty members, and there
has to be that appreciation for what
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those faculty members are doing in the
context of the classroom. Well, you
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can't do that in a siloid effect. We were in my higher ed experience.
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Boy, we were constantly addressing silos
and as soon as we identify them,
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we tried to do everything that we
could to tear down those silos,
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because when you do that you've got
the blinders on and all you see is
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your reality. You're not seeing beyond
it. And it takes it takes a
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campus to recruit a student, it
takes a campus to retain that student,
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it takes a campus to graduate that
student. And if there's that shared sense
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of we're all in this together,
we can't function without the other. A
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true appreciation ation for that, I
think it. It goes a long way
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towards towards success on the campus.
Yeah, I think you're right on that,
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Philip. I've seen some examples both
ways on campus, as I you
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know, where where maybe there's a
really good program that is in high demand,
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but maybe the way it's being marketed. An example I saw recently a
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criminal justice program you know, it's
one of the most popular programs there are
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out there for for some students,
but on the website it was not,
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you know, it wasn't a major
it was embedded in the social work page.
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Well, you know, those students
don't know that that's the way it
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needs to go, and so the
marketing on that was a little bit off.
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And so those silo effect was,
you know, we put it in
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the wrong place because, you know, this is the way we're structured internally.
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And then on the flip side,
I sometimes see, you know,
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well meaning faculty who come and present, you know, a series of programs,
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but the market just isn't there for
that particular program and so all of
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a sudden, you know, silos
especially, is a way that people end
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up pointing fingers and we don't want
that. And I really agree with what
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you're saying there with the idea of
breaking down those silos. Yeah, and
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and I think one easy way to
know if you've had the silo effect is
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to look at your website. I
think that's a great indicator and and I
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fell into this trap for many years
and it was really only towards the end
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of my career that I really kind
of kind of flipped into a one hundred
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and eighty. The tendency is to
want to design the website so that a
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con additions can understand it. It's
structured by departments. Well, why is
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that criminal justice program in the social
worked party? Well, makes sense because
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it's a subset and you know it
is, and you can make a very
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strong academic rationalist to why it's there. Well, the user, sixteen,
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seventeen, eighteen year old girl or
guy who's looking at it and they don't
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know, you know, the disciplines
of social work and where criminal justice is,
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they're not going to intuitively know that. I mean, think about all
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of our web experiences. If we
can't get what we want within one or
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two or three cliques, we've gone
on to the next thing. That's exactly
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and and the markets doing that too. So one way that you can see
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as a college siload. Have they
structured it in such a way that all
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of the active additions can say,
yeah, you know what it's beautiful,
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it's structured exactly how it has to
be, and the market saying this makes
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no sense to us whatsoever. Yeah, well, let's talk about for a
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second. If, just if,
we do have all that alignment, silos
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are removed. We've all been working
on that directly and we've got a we
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got the page in the right place
on the website. Now we're starting to
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talk about the return on the investment
by the program yeah, what's important about
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that? And how? What's what
are some of your experiences on kind of
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that perspective? Yeah, so I
think it's a it's a critical it's a
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critical piece. One of the thing
I do. I'll get to that here
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in a second. The the one
thing that I think is important to know
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about the whole silo issue is I
draw a distinction between tensions and problems.
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You solve problems, you manage tensions, and too often we treat silos as
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if their problems and we want them
to go away. Well, if we
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can just fix it. Well,
now, silos are our tensions and we
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shouldn't run from them. They're actually
they're actually good. We have to learn
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how to manage them because by nature, if you leave it alone we will
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be siload. But if you manage
it, you appreciate the distinction that the
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silo brings, but then also the
value that it brings when it's viewed totally
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as a whole. I think one
of the ways is when you know,
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looking at something like programmatic Roi Return
on investment, that is a non siload
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approach. That is truly something that
tears down those silos and that's looking at
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academic programs and saying, having a
good understanding of the investment that we make
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in this particular program what's our return
on that? And that's a tough exercise
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to go through because you you you
invoke passion. You know the the worship
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Arts Department, were the Performing Arts
Department is going to be very, very
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passionate about their programming. And if
you suddenly show them the numbers because,
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and I'll pick on performing arts,
because the ratios tend to be smaller where,
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you know you have a lot of
one on one instruction, you have
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a lot of ensembles, it's very
it's a very expensive program to run.
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And if you start to actually look
at the return on investment on on performing
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arts programs isolated in itself, most
times you're losing money. It's a losing
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money proposition. Well, we know
that money doesn't grow on trees, right,
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so you know where is the money
coming from in order to support that?
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Well, if you have a thriving
performing arts department, Guess what,
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you're going to have another front porch. You're going to have plays and musicals
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and events that you bring donors to, and donors and now contributing because they
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see the front porch of the institution
and they want to be part of something
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like that. But we need to
get a little bit more disciplined in fully
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understanding the return on invest how much
do we get as a result of this
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academic programs? And you know,
a lot of times in my experience,
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you get caught up and well,
how do we calculate that? Well,
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figure it out. You know nothing's
going to be perfect, right. You
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know how many students are in an
academic program just start adding up some sense
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of expense. Well, how do
you add up to have a register,
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shared registrar and a financial aid office
and but we'll come up with a percentage,
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you know, whatever it is to
try to get of what is the
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actual expense as close as you can
in order for us to operate this program
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and most of our institutions look they're
breaking even in a in a best case
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scenario every year. So you're not
going to find programs that are that are
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much higher and revenue over expense.
But what it does it helps you make
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informed decisions so that if you're choosing
to run an expensive program engineering programs very
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expensive to run, nursing programs very
expensive to run, but if you have
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a good sense of what that cost
is and what your return on investment is,
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you can make informed decisions to say, okay, while the nursing program
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may be expensive to run and our
margin is a lot tighter there, we
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are also running a business administration program
where the margins aren't necessarily as tight and
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it's a little bit cheaper to run
a business administration program so you have a
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sense of okay, we're really going
to enroll more students in this program to
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help support what we do. Because
because nursing is a mission fit program or
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a performing arts department is is a
mission fit program well, we can't operate
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at a loss. We can operate
all of our programs at a lass,
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but we may choose to do that
in this case, but we fund it
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by another means. Yeah. Well, you talk about breaking down silos.
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Now now there's an appreciation on the
business administration side that, Hey, we're
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helping fund a Performing Arts Department or
we're a nursing program or an engineering program
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yeah, I like that because I
think sometimes, especially I think, well,
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I think everywhere, there's this this
idea of Egalitarians and where it's like
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everybody's got to be equal, you
know, especially, and I've had these
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arguments over the course of my career, especially as it relates to the website.
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Well, why is? Why is
the MBA program featured on the website
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and my history programs not? That
doesn't seem right. and well, it
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goes back to what we're talking about
here. It's like, okay, there's
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a little bit of jealousy there,
but at the same time, if I'm
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going to enroll, you know,
seventy five business administration students and I've only
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got three people in the history program
that comes down to dollars and sense sometimes,
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and you know, it's it's sometimes
hard to make those conversations and again
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it I really liked what you said
about managing that tension that that creates rather
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than trying to make that problem go
away by just making everything equal. It
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won't go away because because in in
academia, in scholarship, history is important,
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but no institution, unless you're a
major state university, even they're you
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know, they're they're expensive to run
and they need to appreciate the value of
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we value history. Is Important to
have that program in order for us to
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have that program it means that there's
an appreciation for, and UN reliance on
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these other programs. So it's it's
it's you gain that, that level appreciation
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and you don't. You don't get
that overnight. It's something that you build
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through conversations and people just just knowing
that we're intentional in having this program the
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only way we can have this program
is because we have these other programs.
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That's great. Statistics are saying that
students who are graduating in the next couple
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of years and generation Alpha that's going
to come after them will have at least
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ten different careers within their lifetime,
and some of those careers have not been
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invented yet. So, from your
perspective, how our colleges university supposed to
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train for this? How are they
supposed to offer that mission. Yeah,
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I think this is this is probably
one of the most significant issues and I'll
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make a general statement the higher education
is not quite prepared for and I think
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within my context of Abag, I
think we are on the cutting edge of
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this, realizing the fact that students
are guent. That's not ten different jobs,
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that's ten different occupations. So really, what it does, what it
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it begs the question of what's the
purpose of an undergraduate education? What are
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we preparing the students to do?
For abag, that's very clear. We're
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about the great commission or about training
students with the soft skills in life,
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the relational skills in life, that, regardless of occupational context, they have
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a sense of that they're sharing Christ
with the people that they come in contact
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with. But I think the reality
get crosses over very, very easily,
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as you have to ask the hard
question. Higher Education has to look at
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self in the mirror and say,
what are we preparing our students to do,
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realizing that we can't even anticipate the
career that they're going to have ten
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years now, twenty years from now? Are there requisite life skills, foundational
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skills that we want to make sure
that our graduates leave our institutions with so
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that they can be a successful in
an environment where they will have ten different
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occupations. So I think what it
what it's doing is really begging the whole
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end and in some ways it's kind
of coming back to what higher education was,
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and it was pretty much that sense
of preparing you. So so you
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look at an undergraduate education the court
and undergraduate education is is developing critical thinking
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skills. Unfortunately, higher education is
kind of turned it more into content up.
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You need to know this body of
knowledge and we need to pivot off
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of that, and and and our
classrooms are professors have to pivot on.
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It's not so much this is what
you need to know, because grab your
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phone. Great information is readily available. The question is, what do you
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do with that information? Do you
have the skills to critically think through that
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evaluation or that information and, in
our case, value it for truth capitalty
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to say, you know what,
this information is not valid because of x,
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Y and Z, and I think
there's a whole reframing of higher education
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that's coming where we're going to seriously. Course, the public is already asking
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it. You just have to pick
up a newspaper and somebody saying you're not
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going to take out two mortgages in
order to form my for junior to go
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to college. They're graduating with six
figures of debt, and so the valid
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question is being asked, what's what's
the value? What am I getting as
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a result of this education? And
I think that margin of value to reality
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is just gotten pretty, pretty tight, and I think it's a great reframing
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opportunity to say, you know,
you know what, there is tremendous value.
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We are giving you life skills,
we are giving you relational skills,
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those soft skills to be able to
go into context, to totally reframe who
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we are so that we can be
successful and whatever that next occupation is.
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Look at Covid. Covid just totally
blew up the job market even to where
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we actually do our jobs and where
we work. And how do we prepare
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students to go into that context and
be successful and to be able to reinvent
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themselves so that they can be successful
with whatever that next career that's coming their
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way? Yeah, I love that. That's a really good point. As
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we bring it to a close,
our question to our guest always is if
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there is a tip, a topic
something that you could offer that could be
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immediately implemented? What would that be? Yeah, so I appreciate the question
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and I appreciate the fact that you
ask it in advance so I could actually
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think about it. And so it's
going to sound perhaps too simplistic, but
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if you are, you know,
the head of a recruiting department or Marketing
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Department, or even if you know
if you're if you're just simply recruiting students,
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how do you start to address the
mountain of the silos within higher education?
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It all happens by relationship. I've
yet to experience in my higher ed
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experience the solution to the problem is
a structure. The solution to the problem
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where the solution to managing tensions doesn't
happen by putting a new structure in.
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It happens by relationship. So the
the the easy thing to do. If
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you're a marketer, if you're a
recruitment officer, pick up the phone,
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send an email to the chief academic
officer of the institution where you serve and
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say hey, I want to take
you to lunch. Start building a relationship.
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If you're a recruiter and you don't
fully understand how the academics are structured
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and you sense that there are some
of those silos within your institution. Pick
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up the phone, send an email
to the department head where you don't understand
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it. Build a relationship, have
a conversation, help me understand how social
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work happens. And that's how it
happens, one relationship at a time.
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And I think our technology, this
is one of the downsides of our technology,
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is it's forced us to tyranny of
the urgent. Whatever's coming next,
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I'm just going to dress, I'm
going to dress, I'm going to dress.
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I can, I can, I
can just send a quick email response.
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I can. We've abandoned relationship and
it takes time to build those relationships
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because then when it comes time to
have some of those tough conversations, there's
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a relational context in which you can
have that. I think we need to
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bring relationships back into our working communities. So that's a simple thing. Just
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pick up the phone, just just
take them the lunch. You'll shock the
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socks off of them the fact that
you're right. Take him the coffee if
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you can afford lunch, but build
those relationships one relationship at a time.
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Thank you. Philip, how can
our listeners contact you if they would like
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to do so? Absolutely so.
Email is the best and my email is
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Philip Dot Dearborn at Abh Dot Org, and you can certainly access me through
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our website, Abh she dot org. But I love having conversations around this
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and off any of your listeners want
to continue the conversation, I'd be happy
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to engage with them on that.
Thank you, Philip Bart your closing thoughts?
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Yeah, I just wanted to point
out a few things that Philip said
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because this is such a rich and
informative interview and conversation. I really appreciate
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it. A lot of what we
talked about with mission fit and again,
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you know, rewind a little bit
if you want to kind of re listen
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to that and see how it applies
to your particular school and your particular situation.
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But I think beyond that, one
of the things I really appreciated was
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this idea of tension versus problem,
the idea of managing the tensions and recognizing
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that, you know, we just
can't get rid of problems. We've got
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to kind of look at those and
how that works with silos, and even
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this last tip that Philip said about, you know, building those relationships.
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It reminded me a lot of conversation
we had a few episodes ago with Eleanor
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Bierman from Chief Marketing Officer in Indiana
University. She talked about all the silos
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that are in these big state systems. These silos are everywhere. I mean
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we've been talking about Small Bible colleges
to you know, big state systems like
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Indiana University. Silos exist in higher
education and I love the fact that Philip
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talked about one of the best ways
to bring those silos down is is relationships.
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You know, Eleanor talked about clarity
of vision. There's there's ways of
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relationship and and speaking that clarity of
vision, which I think can happen over
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coffee. Probably the best way to
have that clarity of vision is over coffee
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so that if you don't understand the
vision of the you know, academic department,
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you're talking them over coffee and we're
really getting to know each other and
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building that trust. So really appreciate
your your time and your thoughts on this,
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Philip. Thank you so much for
being a part of this. Absolutely
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my pleasure. That concludes the Higher
Ed Marketer Podcast, which is sponsored by
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00:32:36.680 --> 00:32:40.720
Kaylor solutions and education, marketing and
branding agency and by thing patented, a
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00:32:40.839 --> 00:32:50.000
Marketing Execution Company specializing in mailings,
printing, customization and personalized outreach programs.
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00:32:50.039 --> 00:32:52.720
On behalf of my cohost, Bart
Kaylor, I'm tchroice singer. Thank you
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00:32:52.759 --> 00:33:00.440
for joining us. You've been listening
to the Higher Ed Marketer to to ensure
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00:33:00.480 --> 00:33:04.319
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